


Let Her Perish Twice Over

by Maidenjedi



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-25
Updated: 2012-07-25
Packaged: 2017-11-10 16:43:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maidenjedi/pseuds/Maidenjedi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Belle and revenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Her Perish Twice Over

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Makioka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Makioka/gifts).



> "Whoever loves, let him flourish. Let him perish who knows not love. Let him perish twice over whoever forbids love." - written on a wall in the ruins of Pompeii

Regina was dead.

Her body was broken and twisted, lying at the foot of what might have been her castle, in another world. There were no mourners or even outraged subjects. There was silent awe, for Regina had been brought down quickly, and it had not been Snow or Emma or even Rumpelstiltskin.

There stood Belle, sword in hand, hair whipping in the wind, her revenge complete.

And there was blood on her hands.

-

That was the first nightmare. The first fantasy.

Both.

-

Belle still shook with cold from her prisons. Almost thirty years, first in a cell underground in a castle she never saw in the daylight, then below a hospital in a damp, cold town she didn't recognize.

She shook, and it was cold, yes, bone-deep and cutting, but it was more than that.

It was fear.

And it was desire.

When she closed her eyes, the blood pooled, and the false Queen fell from her perch.

-

He didn't call her 'dearie,' here. He called her Belle.

His skin was clear and his eyes shone with love, but there was still revenge in him, there was still war. He never knew what his beloved had gone through - he claimed to want to bring her closure, to give her Regina's head on a platter.

"Give me time. She will perish for what she's done, Belle. My love." And he would kiss her and mistake the trembling in her hands for passion.

She felt bone and sinew beneath her hands whenever she touched him, and most of the time, she felt only him. Warm and human in this world, even without his own closure, his Bae. She would promise, in her heart, to help him find his son, someday.

And the other times, when she touched him, she felt that she could break him, because the false Queen was bone and sinew, too, and she was blood and a heart that beat though it did not feel.

Why did Regina live, even now?

-

Belle discovered that they were all here.

Snow and Charming, Cinderella and Red. The little wooden boy was a man now, and there was another boy in his place, someone new who had not been in their world. Aurora and Phillip, they were somewhere.

But evil had been swept into Storybrooke with the good, and in the shadows lurked a blind witch and ogres, whispers of dragons and a resurrected Maleficent. It was a smaller world, a mere fraction, and these many stories had never intertwined as they did now.

Whispers about the false Queen proved to be whispers, however. She'd hidden herself, left no trail. The Savior Princess, in her otherworldly leather, claimed to have searched for Regina "everywhere."

Everywhere?

-

"Tell me, Jefferson."

He hummed and he stroked his daughter's hair. It was said he'd gone mad, madder than the hatter he'd been in Wonderland.

Belle flinched, thinking of madness.

"She didn't go there."

"How do you know?"

He gestured to the floors above, around the grand house Regina had banished him to. "I spent twenty-eight years looking for the way back. I never found it. Regina couldn't do better. She never could." He patted his daughter's shoulder and told her to go to bed, he'd be up to tuck her in.

"She needed me for it, she always did." He hummed some more. "Late, late, for a very important date," he sing-songed, and he giggled. Belle flinched again.

"What if she didn't need you for this, Jefferson? What if she got out?"

"Then heaven help them in the next world, whichever one that is," he said, sanity fighting for a foothold as it always did with the poor Mad Hatter. "But she's here, Belle. She's here. It's just...where did she go, where she could see and we could not?"

Belle looked out the window. "A prison."

Jefferson giggled and bit his lip, and clapped his hands. "A prison. Just so. " He followed her gaze out the window. "Look. Snow. Do you hear the snow against the windowpanes?"

Belle imagined that she did. She had. "How nice and soft it sounds."

"Look for the apple tree, beauty.  She never ventures far.  Look for the apple tree."  Jefferson walked to the doorway, and turned back to look at her.  "Are you sure about this, what you want to do?  Are you sure you can?"

Belle was surprised.  "Yes, of course I'm sure.  Wouldn't you do it?"

"If I could, perhaps.  Perhaps I would."

She was suddenly curious.  He had more reason, maybe than them all, maybe more than Belle.  "Why haven't you?  What stops you, even now, that the curse is broken and magic is restored?  Of all people, why not you?"

Jefferson smiled, and tugged at his collar.  "My dear girl, look at the time.  8:15."

"Yes, so?"

"Are sure you aren't quite mad, after all?"

-

There was a little old woman who no one knew, and yet they all claimed she was supposed to be here. She was one of them, they just didn't know her name.

Belle followed her, certain. Jefferson had suggested it. And there it was, the unmistakable sign. The apple tree.

Why did none of them remember?

-

The nightmare was the same. Always the same. Belle, victorious; Regina, defeated. The false Queen's reign at a terrible, final end.

-

"I know it's you, Regina."

The old woman stopped.

"You can't hide forever, not from me. You took too much from me. You took everything, and you left me with nothing."

The woman said nothing.

"I won't warn you a second time. Come out and face us, face me. Your reign is over and it is time you paid the price for your crimes."

The old woman shuffled along at that, and Belle wondered if she'd been wrong, if the old woman was just a woman after all.

"My stars - how did you guess?" The voice was familiar, but she'd never heard it come from a man. Jiminy. He'd come up behind her, probably to see who the woman was and to keep crazy old Belle from harassing her. So many of them questioned Belle, even now, even with the spell broken. "How did you know it was her?"

"How do you know?" Belle squinted up at him. The old cricket.

"She never could hide completely, not from me. Magic trails behind her, like a scent." As if to make Jiminy's point, his Dalmatian whined beside him. "How we didn't notice her before is beyond me."

Belle shrugged. "All this magic, concentrated in one place? It's a wonder I found her even now."

Jiminy nodded. "We have to tell the others. The Blue Fairy, she needs to know. Snow, Charming, the Princess, all of them. We need to figure out a strategy."

Belle went along.

-

All sorts of ideas about humanity and kindness and ideas less than bloody were brought forward. So were more extreme punishments, mostly revolving around banishment or imprisonment.

But you can't keep an evil witch locked up indefinitely.

And no one was getting to the point.

Belle slipped away, and went to Rumpelstiltskin's shop. She went directly to the back room, where he'd shown her a special cabinet, with seven locks and a verse to whisper in order for it to open.

The sword gleamed, sparkled, genuinely shined as though newly forged and polished for a king.

"The dragonslayer."

She spun around, sword out.

"Easy, dearie," he said, and she was shocked to hear that word, ecstatic to hear that word, even in this world's voice. "Don't swing that thing around so casually like that. One might think you didn't care who you killed."

"You know what I mean to do."

"Yes, I figured as much. But do you think it will end?"

Belle stared at him.

"The cold, dearie. A sword isn't usually a good weapon against the cold."

She sheathed it and walked out, and Rumpelstiltskin's tears went unseen and unacknowledged.

-

"You kept us apart! You knew it was true love and yet you let him think I was dead, that I had betrayed him!"

Regina laughed, she dared to laugh.  "But you did, don't you see?  Betrayal is inevitable, that's what love really means.  We always hurt the ones we love and all that.  But you wouldn't know, would you?  Poor girl.  He didn't love you back, not really.  What does his kind know of love?"

Belle lunged.  Regina avoided the blow.

"But you see, Belle, it all turned out your way in the end.  He got his wish.  Or, did he?  Was it you he wished for, on a bright star?"

Belle shouted, she screamed, she charged.

Regina, smirking, cut to the side and waved her hand.  "You can try.  You can always try.  Has it occured to you I may die today, and you will still have to kill me again?  And again?"  

This time Belle caught her.  She swung and sliced and Regina was too slow.

And she did it over and over, until the cold was gone and her heart raced and she was victorious.

Regina laughed while she died. That was the part that always gave it away, in the end. Regina, the false Queen, cackled like the hag she disguised herself as and Belle would crumple, she would cry out in disbelief. And Rumpelstiltskin would lurk in the shadow, shaking his head, crying for her. And the others would turn their backs, and the silence was not awe, it was acceptance. They had all accepted it, this world and their fate and the false Queen's curse.

There stood Belle, sword in hand, hair whipping in the wind, her revenge complete.

And there was blood on her hands.

That was how the dream always went.

-

The cold was never gone, was it?

The floor was concrete and there were bars on the window. On clear nights, she could sometimes see the moon, and when she saw stars she made wishes. That's what you do, right, when you see stars?

"When you wish upon a star," she sang. "It makes no difference who you are."

"Oh, but it does." The door swung open behind her, creaking. She couldn't turn around, though. The jacket prevented that.

"Go away!" She closed her eyes. She didn't know this woman, didn't know where she was. She wanted to be alone with her wish.

"Gladly, dear, in just one moment. I only came to ask - do you remember him?"

Flashes of a man with mottled skin and a gleeful cackle came to mind.

"Do you?"

Now flashes of a well-dressed man, clean and sad, the same man, only different.

"Go away!"

The woman laughed. She cackled.

"Enjoy your stay, Belle."

The door slammed, and Belle (was that her name? What was her name?) dreamed of blood and triumph and the world right again.

The false Queen would lay at her feet.

Oh, how they would all laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> Source for the title and the quote: http://www.pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti%20from%20Pompeii.htm
> 
> Also, the back-and-forth about snow between Jefferson and Belle is from "Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There," by Lewis Carroll.


End file.
